“Treadmill.”
“Fine.” I turned right down a hall and headed into a large, dark room. I hit a power switch and the place lit up. There was row after row of treadmills and televisions in both corners.
“Welcome,” I said, “to running nirvana.”
“Great. Get your ass up there.”
I laughed. “Getting pushy? I like it.”
“I just don’t want to get caught.”
I walked over to the closest treadmill and turned it on. I took off my top layer so that I was in only a white T-shirt and my gym shorts. Avery dropped her bag next to me and began to root through it.
“Okay,” she said, taking a little device out. “I got this beauty from the lab I used to work in.”
“What is it? It looks like an octopus.”
“It’s a Holter monitor, basically. It’ll monitor your heart and all that good stuff. Take your shirt off.”
“You’re always asking me to strip. I like it, but it’d be nice if you would return the favor.”
She did not look amused. I pulled my shirt off and tossed it aside.
“Stay still.” She began to attach the device to my chest, putting little sticky electrodes on my skin, and then finally clipped a battery pack thing to my shorts.
“Oh good. This feels really natural,” I joked.
“Get to running.” She grinned at me.
“Okay then.” I turned the treadmill on. “How fast?”
“Not too fast. Just enough to get your breath going.”
I started to jog. I didn’t push it and went at a medium pace, just enough to get my heart pumping and my breath coming in faster.
Meanwhile, Avery pulled her laptop out. She turned it on and started clicking and typing as I ran. I eyed her, curious about what she was doing, but I didn’t push. I figured this was her shit and I was just her lab rat.
“Okay, you’re looking good,” she said.
“No kidding.”
“Are you going to make jokes about everything I say?”
“Yes,” I answered seriously.
“Fine. Go faster.”
“You just want to see me sweat.”
“Yeah, I do, but not for the reason you want.”
I laughed and turned the machine up, going faster. I could feel it now, and I felt good. I loved pushing my body to its limit, loved exerting myself and seeing how hard I could push. I loved that feeling of going beyond what I had thought was possible before.
Avery alternated between watching me and watching her laptop screen. She wasn’t taking any other measurements, but she would click and type something periodically. I was on the treadmill for about twenty minutes before she finally told me to cut it off.
I slowed it down to a walk as I cooled off. I was sweating, my white T-shirt clinging to my body. I grinned at her.
“Did I pass the test?” I asked her.
“With flying colors.” She smiled at me. “Some really cool data on here.”
“Yeah? Like what?”
“Heart rate, beats per minute, that sort of stuff. Next time we do this, I want to try making you run inclines, mix it up, see how your body reacts.”
“If you want to see my body react, all you need to do is come over here and take those clothes off.”
Finally, she smiled and laughed a little bit at one of my jokes. Apparently all it took was a twenty-minute jog and a bunch of science data to make her happy.
She was totally unlike any other girl I’d ever experienced. I was used to cheerleaders and pep squad girls, the type of girl that knew my stats but only because my popularity got her off. Avery was not that girl at all. In fact, she was the total opposite.
Maybe that was what drew me toward her. She was completely unlike any girl I’d been with. Maybe that was what I’d been looking for. All it took was getting her pregnant to really start to figure that out.
I got off the treadmill finally and grabbed a towel from my bag, wiping off as Avery continued to type away. I walked around behind her and looked over her shoulder.
It was all numbers in a spreadsheet. I didn’t understand a bit of it, but she was typing and clicking away like it all made sense.
“You’re such a nerd,” I said finally.
She looked up at me. “Sorry. I got a little lost in this.”
“Those are just numbers, you know.”
“But they’re numbers that mean something. They’re important numbers.”
I shrugged. “I guess so.”
She typed something and then shut her laptop lid. “I guess we should get going.”
“Did you get what you wanted?”
She nodded and put her laptop away in her bag. “Yeah, I did.”
“I’m not sure I got what I wanted.”
She stood up and looked at me. “What do you want, Gibson?”